Electing Loss

i think i'm crazy... however, i've been caught in limbo and do not even have a way to tell up from down, right from wrong... crazy from normal. at least i don't think i have a way...

but this just says it all too well...
"...i tried and tried and tried to make something work that had stopped working a long time before i tried to salvage it. and i left, in the end, beccause i had no other choice... i feel like something unraveled around me. i feel more vulnerable and powerless than i have in a decade. i don't recognize myself in the mirror...

the point, i can see now, is not the running. the point is that the running was like a safety pin that was holding me together, and when the pin released, the whole system of my life and my self have fallen apart. i know that this is just something i have done in the past, that it's not a badge of who i am, that it's not as important as my character or my family or my soul. i know.

i know those things, but something has happened to me since i've quit running. something bad. i've lost it, whatever it is. i've lost that sense that i was okay, and that i will be okay again. i've lost all belief in my future. i'm sad and scared and ashamed. without knowing it, without intending to, i've shoved way too much of myself into my running, more than it could possibly bear, and i set myself up to fall a terrible distance if something were ever to happen to that part of my llife... i put all my eggs in that one basket, until it became impossibly heavy, and it broke.

...when i gave up running i gave up my identity, my confidence, my legitimacy. and it's not anyone's fault but my own. it's my fault for trying to find a shortcut, knowing full well that true spiritual depth and actual confidence have no substitutes."

(paraphrased from "Cold Tangerines" by Shauna Niequist)

who else purges something from their life that they love, that isn't unhealthy in and of itself, just for the fun of it? well, moreso because i KNOW the motive behind it is wrong. i ask myself if this is even necessary? but when i think of going back to it i feel like i am returning to an old addiction...

well, the previous paragraphs are from last week. yesterday i went for a run.

i discovered over the weekend a really scary truth through a simple statement to my husband and a sudden realization of the answer- i NEED God.

of course i know this yet at the same time have not determined to make good on that realization. it's been my intention for the past couple weeks to get up at 6am every morning simply because i can. to work out a couple of those days, to give myself some time to enjoy the morning, and most certainly to give myself the time to spend with the Lord that i so desperately NEED. i think that giving up running for a few weeks made this realization for change blatantly necessary. and now i see the WHOLE need for change- to be legitimately me in the Lord. without HIM i am NOT legitimate.

so, yes, this week i have been waking at 6am and giving myself those things that i need. and my days are progressing so much better. success!

(we'll see if i can keep it up...)